As its on­col­o­gy ef­fort gath­ers steam, As­traZeneca sheds an­oth­er lega­cy drug

On the day As­traZeneca suf­fered a set­back af­ter the US reg­u­la­tor re­ject­ed its triplet for chron­ic ob­struc­tive pul­monary dis­ease — it al­so palmed off the rights to a lega­cy treat­ment, Losec, to Ger­many’s Chep­lapharm Arzneimit­tel GmbH in a deal worth $243 mil­lion up­front.

Losec con­tains the ac­tive in­gre­di­ent omepra­zole and be­longs to a class of drugs called pro­ton pump in­hibitors that are en­gi­neered to work by di­min­ish­ing the lev­el of acid the stom­ach pro­duces. It has a num­ber of ap­proved in­di­ca­tions and is com­mon­ly pre­scribed for pa­tients with gas­tro-oe­sophageal re­flux dis­ease.

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